Dr. Adam Watts of the Desert Research Institute is standing by the side of the road near Donner Pass, shouting over the wind into his phone to talk about a recent test flight. “We built a robot that can fly itself and bring more water out of clouds,” he says, capturing the technological promise at hand in just a few words. Together with Nevada's Drone America, the team flew a cloud-seeding drone beyond the pilot's line of sight. It's the next step in a gradual and ambitious process, aimed at solving a decades-old problem: can the desert pull more water from the sky, and can it do so without injuring anyone along the way?
Earth's clouds are sinking lower in the sky, with fewer clouds at high altitudes and lower cloudtops in general, says a new analysis of satellite data. The coming fog means that Earth will cool down more efficiently - so the lowering of clouds could slow the effects of global warming.
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